i never failed science but physics failed me
by crossedgalaxies
Summary: au where the monolith takes fitz through various parallel universes, and in each and every one of them, he finds jemma. (angst because framework fitz ruined me and still does)


_**one**__. "you were volume, you were mass"_

this earth, earth-139, is the very first one i remember. the very first iteration of me, leopold james fitz – the beginning of hundreds of different lives in hundreds of different earths much like this one but not quite. in this one i only have bits and pieces of memory, hazy and bland, until the day i met jemma simmons. we were childhood friends. her, of royal blood, and i, the son of a kitchen worker.

the years pass by and the distance between us grows because kings and queens understand that princesses and kitchen boys don't go together – not in that way – not in this time, not on this earth. she spends most of her time under the supervision of her tutors, learning biology, chemistry, and various mathematical equations i'd never even seen before. when she's not, the king lines up suitors in the hopes that one day her daughter would take over the kingdom. (there is one especially that takes a liking to her – a prince will daniels, i think – and he makes me sick to my stomach.) i savor the little time we spend together, a nostalgic feeling, a longing for the simplicity of childhood. she sneaks glances through the windows and pulls me aside in hallways to talk about the scientific things she's learned. always passionate for learning, always a thirst for knowledge. it doesn't take me too long to fall in love with her. but is there anything i could say? anything that could change the socioeconomic prejudices of our time? i decide to keep my feelings to myself. i was never good at expressing these kinds of things anyway.

the next time she speaks to me it isn't in words, but in rushed letters strung together on a ripped piece of paper.

_fitz. meet me outside where we used to play as kids. i've discovered something magnificent!_

i rush to the edge of the woods as she beckons me to travel further, into the dark. holding a lantern, her slender arm pushes through greenery, uncovering the sight before us. a monolith of some sort with strange holes in seemingly random places.

"what do you think it is?" she whispers, her eyes full of excitement and wonder. "i wonder how it even got here." she steps a little closer to the unknown object and stretches out her arm, touching the surface. "it's cold," she says.

i follow her and press my hand onto the rock… and my arm pushes through. it's a cold, molasses-like liquid, and the harder i try to pull away, the harder it pulls me in. i turn to see her frightened face. she's pulling my other arm, trying to anchor me to safety. still so beautiful, in a haunting way - and i realize that this may be my only chance to tell her. if i don't, she'll never know.

"we'll get you out of there, fitz. just hold on. just please…" her eyes are watering.

"i don't think i can... listen, jemma, i lo–"

and i am swallowed into nothingness.

* * *

_**two**__. "you took up space and now when i reach out, there is nothing between my fingers"_

the monolith spits me into another world, much like this one, but not quite. this is the next earth i remember. i still look the same, feel the same, but the world has changed so much and it baffles me completely. is this what the monolith does? give someone a new life in a new time? in the back of my mind i remember her. jemma simmons. my best friend, my princess, the one i love. but there is no sign of that rock anywhere, and after a while, my hope of seeing her lessens. until i remember she always wanted to be a doctor.

i hunt down every medical practice in the area – a place called florence, italy. it's 1826 when i finally see that familiar face at this hospital called shield. this time, her hair is tied up, her hair a little more red than i remember, her eyes more hazel than brown, but the constellations on her face the same. any happiness on my face instantly leaves once i realize she was not there as a doctor.

"jemma?"

she looks at me with a puzzled expression and coughs into her handkerchief. for a moment i think i caught a glimpse of blood, but she hides it away from me.

"listen, there's something i need to tell you."

i tell her the story of the monolith that swallowed me up, the story of how she was royalty, and how i worked for her in the kitchen with my family. she simply laughs it off, telling me what a strange dream i had, and that if i was serious, i'd come to the wrong place – the asylum is a few blocks away.

i realize the situation and silently scream at the universe. she doesn't remember me at all. perhaps, in this life, in this earth, we've never met before. i'm the one burdened with memories of who we were before, and she's the one that doesn't have to carry this weight at all.

she must've noticed my panicked expression, because her voice softens as she puts her hand on my arm. "hey… i don't know what you've been through, and i can't pretend to know… but if it's bothering you that much, you can keep talking to me. the doctors said i don't have much time, anyway." her words ring in my ears. _she doesn't have much time left. i came here too late._

"sorry – i guess you reminded me of someone."

she coughs again, this time with more blood than the previous, and instinctively i reach for her hand. she doesn't stop me and we sit in silence for a while until she breaks it with her raspy voice.

"are you afraid? of death, i mean."

"well, my mom always said that you shouldn't be afraid, because it's just like the way life was before you were born."

she lets out a small chuckle. "that doesn't seem so bad, i suppose."

i stay with her until her very last moments, and then the monolith appears out of nowhere, come back to transport me to another earth.

* * *

_**three**__. "you dissipated."_

the fifteenth time i see her it's in the middle of a war. this earth became invaded by all sorts of monsters i'd never seen before – kaijus, i think they called them. in this one i dreamt of traversing the stars but instead get thrown into making jaegers. a godzilla-sized robot designed to combat the kaijus. it's in this earth that i find my passion for engineering.

she's the daughter of a marshal but she, too, dreams of the stars.

"do you think we'll ever find anything up there instead of under the ocean?"

i turn and see her face for the first time (in this time, in this place) as she gazes at the cosmos in awe. the stars reflect in her brown eyes, and this time she wears her hair down in waves. she's clutching a clipboard with scribbles of mathematical equations all over blueprints of jaegers she's designed. always the intellect. my brilliant, beautiful, princess. time and space may have changed but my love certainly hadn't.

"i'm not sure, but i hope so." i don't tell her about the monolith. i don't tell her about how she was royalty the first time we met, or the hospital in florence, or the time we spent holding hands in the coast of scotland, or how she died in my arms as we fled from the mafia. i don't tell her about how in one earth she was a painter, and i was a poet, then in another we were farmers, and another we were fighting for our lives during the dust bowl.

i don't tell her because each time i do, she never remembers me, and she brushes it off. all i wanted was a simple, happy life with her. with the woman i love, the woman i loved, and will love, in each and every iteration of us.

in this earth i sacrifice myself for her, piloting the jaeger all the way to the bottom of the ocean, partially in the hopes that the loop would finally end. but just before the machine explodes, the monolith comes back. of course – it always comes back.

* * *

_**four**__. "i never failed science but physics failed me"_

at my thirtieth iteration i get thrown into this earth, our current earth, and in this one we're scientists. she's biochem and i'm engineering. i like this version of us the most because we spend nearly all our time together, side by side, ever since our first day at the academy. i fall for her headfirst and fast, just like in the first earth. i search for months during the academy for something - anything - smart enough i could say to catch her attention. it's not like she'd remember me, but i have to try. i can't give up. i still hadn't figured out why i was the one who remembered and she was the one who always forgot. perhaps in this earth, in this time, i'd finally find the answer. i had enough technology at my disposal, anyway.

in this earth, i don't have the courage to tell her who i am and how i feel. that's a fixed part of my personality in all these versions of me - i could never find the right words to say to her nor the right time to say it. one day, the professor assigns us as lab partners and that's how everything started. we weren't known as fitz and simmons anymore. we were fitzsimmons. the smartest pair in the academy, an unbreakable duo.

but time and space were never on our side. not in this one, certainly. i spend the next decade searching for an answer to why i'm always the one who remembers, and she's always the one who forgets. why i have this knowledge of all these different earths, why our love story always seems to end the same way – in separation or death. then the months turn into years, and the years turn into a decade. the piles of paper, years of research, scattered all over my desk. it was in this earth that i learned the monolith had a name: maveth. "death by punishment." was that my punishment? was i cursed to go through each and every iteration of myself in various, differing worlds, only to watch us get separated or die? was that how our story ends?

i tell her this myself – that we were cursed. that the universe didn't want us to be together. but this time, we were different. we were ready to fight whatever the universe had against us.

we're sitting on the floor and i feel her head on my shoulder as she asks if we'd find ever anything good in space. anything... not trying to kill us, not trying to take us away from each other. i turn to look at her face, just as magnificent as the first time i saw her, hauntingly beautiful, with nebulas in her eyes and roses on her lips. even with the blood on her face.

"who needs space? i've got something magnificent right here."

she laughs, and i ramble on, wanting to forget the past parallel universes i'm burdened to remember. she shuts me up by pressing her rosy lips onto mine, and for a moment, the only thing i was aware of was her and i. just us. she takes my mind off of everything and calms me down, my my princess, my starry-eyed lover, the one i keep searching for in every single universe and every single earth.

no matter what happens, the universe can't stop us.

* * *

_**five**__. "you mattered and you disappeared."_

in the same earth, in an alternate reality, she comes back from the dead. crawled out of the dirt, buried alive, and fought her way to the living. the world is much different than she remembers - hydra won the war and what's left of shield became the resistance against that totalitarian regime.

i hate this one the most because of who i became and that she saw me be… him.

in this reality, the object of my desire was ophelia. we fought our way up the ranks; we tortured, we killed, all in the name of scientific endeavors and crimes against inhumanity. we did what we felt we needed to in this dictatorship to survive. it felt natural. and that's who i was... the doctor.

the day came when she was spotted by one of the drones. her presence was alerted to ophelia, who so badly wanted her gone. curious to see what exactly it was that was bothering her, i sneak behind her computer and find the woman.

jemma simmons.

i felt as if there was something i was forgetting... something i had missed in all my calculations. was she someone dangerous we'd operated on in the past? no, i would've remembered that face. had we fought against her before? possibly, but in this reality i rarely get my hands dirty - just send others to do the dirty work instead. ophelia convinces me not to think of that woman so much and presses her cold lips against mine. and it works. for a while i don't think of her. until radcliffe tells me about the other side.

"and the woman? jemma simmons?"

"you two were in love. unbreakable. a force to be reckoned with. the fitz i knew nearly drowned for jemma. he crossed the bloody universe to rescue her."

i couldn't believe him. that wasn't me – how could that be me? how could i trust him? he was a liar, after all. i quickly grab my gun and point it at the woman beside me. i take the shot and hear a scream.

turning around, i see her. it's her, again. it's always her. the woman from the picture. jemma simmons. for a second i remember - a faint memory of her standing beside me, a smile, a laugh - but the next second i forget.

it's this reality i hate the most, because of what i almost did to her. what i would've done to her, and what i did do.

i hunted her down, the murderer of my father.

"this wasn't supposed to happen!"

i push the gun against the top of her head and she whimpers.

"_i love you_," she says. it doesn't faze me. without missing a beat, i reply bitterly.

"you mean nothing to me."

a gunshot rings but it's not from mine. i feel the pain rippling through my body and get pushed through a portal.

when it's all over i can't forgive myself. i couldn't look her in the eye again. the one time she remembered was the one time i forgot.


End file.
